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Truth or Lies - There is No Compromise

Making extensive use of the Scriptures, join Michael Haldas as he teaches an in-depth Bible lesson on the truth about truth; the truth about the real gravity and depravity of lies and lying; and what Christ means when He talks about the “father of lies” and “the ruler of this world” who was “a murderer from the beginning.”




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Threads of Life and Tangled Webs: How to Make Sense of Our Lives and See the Beauty Amidst the Chaos

Join Michael as he explores the webs and patterns of our life, and uses poem, story, myth, metaphor, and examples from his own life to show how we can recognize God and continuity within our myriad choices, and know His peace.




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Freeing Ourselves from Bondage

Bondage to sin and wrong behavior and struggling with things we can’t seem to overcome plague us all to lesser or greater degrees. Join Michael as he talks about three typical forms of bondage that grip us and what we need to do to overcome them.




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Capturing our Minds in a World of False Images

Join Michael as he talks about how to capture and protect our mind from the world of false images we live in, and how doing so also supports our mental, physical and spiritual health.




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Self-Denial or Self-Desire

Join Michael as he discusses the danger of giving into the wrong desires, some of which seem benign but aren’t; the struggles we encounter on the journey from self-desire to self-denial; what authors such as Lewis, Tolkien, and others can teach us; and ways we can frame our thought to help us with this important struggle.




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Not Losing Heart in These Troubling Times

Join Michael as he discusses what it really means “not to lose heart” according to Christ and St. Paul, examines the scriptures where these words are used, looks at their meaning in the original Greek, and why we actually have a responsibility to others not to lose heart.




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It is More Blessed to Give Than to Receive Except for Suffering

Join Michael as he discusses the Book of Job as a case study in suffering and the importance of how we receive our suffering; how it is often what defines our salvation and belief in and relationship to God; what God gives and does not give to us in our suffering; and how our suffering can be a mystery and those closest to us can often create obstacles for us to receive it well.




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Great Lent – The Sacred and the Secular

Great Lent is a holy and sacred time of year yet we can turn it into a secular practice and experience if we are not careful. Join Michael as he discusses our understanding and participation in Lent, and how to avoid subtle ways that lead us to experience Lent less than how we should.




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Darn those Darnels: Acquiring Discernment in this Age of Deception

Join Michael as he discusses what a darnel is and what it means to us, how easy it is to be deceived by the spirit of the age, and what we need to do to ensure we gain and apply Christ-like discernment in all matters.




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Saving Ourselves and Others Through Patience

Join Michael as he provides an in-depth discussion of the many spiritual aspects of patience that are critical to our salvation and the salvation of others, and how lacking this virtue is more spiritually harmful than we may realize.




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Do We Get What We Deserve?

What do we deserve in life? Anything? Everything? Join Michael as he addresses the various ways we can focus on what we deserve and how most of them lead us in the wrong spiritual direction.




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Consenting to the Devil

Join Michael as he addresses our choices and what we consent to that results in us either growing in holiness and union with Christ, or an unholy union with the devil that leads to our gradual and eventual complete destruction.




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Why We Need Separation Before Unity

Join Michael as he discusses why we need separation that is holy before we can have true unity with each other; and how many are choosing an unholy type of separation based on fear, ideologies, and other things are the entry to the wide gate leading to destruction.




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Healing the Soul through Self-Forgiveness

Join Michael for a discussion on why forgiving ourselves is often so hard and what we need to understand and do to open our hearts to self-forgiveness.




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Unknowing Ourselves

Join Michael as he discusses how we should see and experience ourselves and others as living icons of Christ, and how we achieve this through the difficult task unknowing ourselves.




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Mutual Accountability and the Awesome Judgment Seat of Christ

Join Michael in discussion of what it means in the Liturgy when the Priest prays “And let us ask for a Christian end to our life, peaceful, without shame and suffering, and for a good defense before the awesome judgment seat of Christ” and how that should drive our daily behavior.




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Dealing with Difficulties and Setbacks

Join Michael in a discussion about prayerful and practical ways to frame our understanding in regard to our difficulties and setbacks, and deal with them in a spiritually healthy way.




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Our Bodies and the Sin of Self-Neglect

Join Michael in a discussion about how we often neglect our bodies, the physical and spiritual ramifications to ourselves and loved ones, how this is profoundly unspiritual, and what we need to think and do to treat our physical selves the way God intends us to.




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Serving the Angel of Contentment or the Demon of Desire

Join Michael in a discussion of our desires, how they get in the away of the elusive peace we seek, and what we need to do to find true contentment.




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Making Sense of our Failures

Father Seraphim reflects on the life of Saint Columba, and talks about spiritual fathers.




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Secular Worries

The worries of American Christians, as important and contemporary as they may be, are in reality secular concerns.




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Confessing to Grow Closer to God

Fr. Seraphim reflects on his experiences confessing, the role of a spiritual father, and he gives three recommendations to help get the most out of each confession.




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Fr. Seraphim Returns to Podcasting

Fr. Seraphim Aldea talks about his reasons for taking a break from the podcast.




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Losing Hope Because of Temptation

Fr. Seraphim speaks about losing hope and temptation and how it is not a sin until we act upon it. He goes into detail about our salvation and the difference between falling into sin and being tempted.




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The Day When Our Souls Are Cleansed and We Reflect the Perfect Image of God

The Feast of Theophany, when God the Trinity reveals Himself to us.




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How do I drag myself out of sin and back to prayer? How soon can I ask for God's forgiveness?

After we sin, our hearts freeze. For a while, we stay away from God on purpose. We need time to heal, we need some sort of ritual of cleansing, some manner in which to make ourselves (in our own eyes) acceptable again to God. But the way back to prayer must begin as soon as possible, if possible even during the act of sin itself. The sooner we turn ourselves back to face Christ's Light, the sooner we shall drag ourselves out of the depth of our fall. Remind yourself of those who were waiting in the darkness of hell for Christ's Descent - ask for their desperate desire to be forgiven, pray for their unceasing hope that Light WILL one day find them and bring them back to Life out of the death of their hell. For those who put their trust in Christ, there is always Hope, there is always Love, there is always a way back to repentance and Life.




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The Self Destructive Cycle of Shame, Despair and Pride

Fr. Seraphim Aldea reminds us that who we are in Christ is the best version of ourselves.




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Why do we lose God's gifts to us? We forget what we don't use.

Why do we forget all the beautiful things God teaches us in our life? How come we cannot hold on and remember all the advice God speaks to our hearts, either in prayer or through the people and circumstances of our lives?




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The Struggle to see Goodness in All

Some people thrive and others collapse fought by the same temptations, in the same context, surrounded by the same people. St Paisius the Agiorite (St Paisius of the Holy Mountain) and St John of the Ladder teach us that a joyful disposition of the heart and the determination to see goodness in everyone can make the difference between spiritual life and death. We need to train our thoughts to always 'translate' the situations we face into good examples, into sources of strength, virtue and beauty. Depending on whether we decode this world through a lens of love or one of condemnation, the same temptations can feed the Divine Image in us or the nothingness in us.




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God's “Obsession” with Lust

Why is God so interested in what we do in the bedroom? Why is the Church so keen that we should learn to control our bodies and their passions? Why can't we just focus on the spiritual side of life and live as spiritual beings?




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I Suffer from Anxiety and Low Self-Esteem. All I Want is to Love and Be Loved.

The opinion of others can destroy one's self-esteem. We need to found our life on Christ's values, regardless of the response that generates in those around us. We may be unpopular, but we are truly ourselves, and that is worth carrying this Cross for.




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Be Blessed This Christmas, My Dear Ones

Fr. Seraphim shares a message of forgiveness at Christmas.




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Reset Your Spiritual Life

'All is well, but I feel dry. Where there was life, I now have only the memory of it.' We tend to formalise our spiritual life, but Life is not in formalities: Life is in the Spirit—We need to reset our spiritual life to factory settings, jumping out of our comfort zones into a new, living faith.




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We need a short break: Going for a spiritual reset to the Moldavian monasteries in Northern Romania

Fr. Seraphim gives a short update.




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You Need Time and Space ALONE for a RESET of your Life

Fr. Seraphim encourages viewers to take time away before resetting their lives.




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How to Fight Evil from our Hearts in a World of Lies and Confusion (w/ Fr. Seraphim Aldea)

How to Fight Evil from our Hearts in a World of Lies and Confusion (w/ Fr. Seraphim Aldea)




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Procrastination and Self-Worth

Procrastination and Self-Worth (w/ Fr. Seraphim Aldea)




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The One True Christ... and the many false ones

The One True Christ... and the many false ones (w/ Fr. Seraphim Aldea)




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Why You Shouldn’t Use a Plagiarism Checker as a Freelance Writer

As a freelance writer, you’re going to run into a lot of clients that are petrified by the idea of plagiarized or stolen content. That fear is not without reason. Search engines are capable of sniffing out plagiarism or duplicate content and they penalize the blogs and websites that engage in it. That fear of […]

The post Why You Shouldn’t Use a Plagiarism Checker as a Freelance Writer appeared first on Leaving Work Behind.




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How to Design a User-Friendly WordPress Blog

You can run into the most amazing and interesting blog on the web, only to find out it’s a chore to navigate. When it comes to websites, good content alone doesn’t make for success – the entire experience needs to be enjoyable. Think about your blog as a library. It needs to be inviting, easy […]

The post How to Design a User-Friendly WordPress Blog appeared first on Leaving Work Behind.




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Same Sex Marriage and the Disruption of the Human Narrative

Fr. Steven takes a break from his commentary on Orthodox unity to speak about the recent Supreme Court decision related to Same Sex Marriage.




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The Old Man and the Sea

It's summertime! Does God speak to us through the wind, waves, and sun? Fr. Steven thinks so, and talks about why all of life is sacred and that our witness weakens because we fail to live the Church outside the Church.




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Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

The events in Houston elicited some marvelous human responses. But Fr. Steven wonders why it takes a catastrophe to bring out the best in us.




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On the Coarseness of Language

Does the degradation of language reflect a degradation of the human being? Yes, it does.




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The Seduction of the Moment

Fr. Steven. Ritter asks: Is there a way we can break out of our obsession with the things of this world?




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The Frozen Chosen

Fr. Steven explores and critiques the mega-hit phenomenon about the Life of Jesus, The Chosen




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Holy Martyr Arethas and Those with Him




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Holy Martyr Arethas and Those with Him




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Holy Martyr Arethas and Those with Him




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Holy Martyr Arethas and Those with Him